To whoever cares, here's the answer to the "whomever" quiz

In a prior post I asked people to comment on a rather convoluted sentence I had made up purely as a thought experiment.

This was in reference to my column in which I accused George F. Will of hypercorrectionism for having written, "Whomever the Republicans nominate should assume he must replace Iowa's seven electoral votes."

Many amateur grammarians out there wrote in to tell me Will was right. Their theory was that the subject of the sentence is not "whomever" but "Whomever the Republicans nominate."

This is not the case.

I noted that professionals often use the mistaken "Whom shall I say is calling?" as an example of how amateurs misuse "whom" in an effort to sound erudite. It should of course be "Who should I say is calling?"

I therefore constructed the following admittedly awkward sentence: "(Whoever/whomever) wins the most support and the Republicans nominate should assume he must replace Iowa's seven electoral votes."

I invited readers to comment on whether "whoever" or "whomever" is appropriate and give reasons for the choice.

Several came close, but no one got it exactly right.

To solve the problem, first consider that "whoever" or "whomever," as relative pronouns, can be replaced for the purposes of this experiment by "the person that."

The sentence then becomes "The person that wins the most support and (that) the Republicans nominate should assume he must replace Iowa's seven electoral votes."

Diagram that sentence and you will see that the subject "Whoever" sits alone in the nominative case, while the two relative clauses "that wins the most support" and "that the Republicans nominate" drop off below, where they belong.

Quite obviously, an infinite number of relative clauses can be diagrammed off a single subject, but the subject in question is neither the subject nor the object of the clauses. The subject of the clauses is "that."

In the original Will formulation, the sentence can be easily rewritten to include the implied "that." It is thus "Whomever that the Republicans nominate should assume he must replace Iowa's seven electoral votes."

In that formulation, even an amateur would understand why "whomever" is incorrect and, even worse, pretentious.

If you disagree, try diagramming the test sentence that I constructed. You will quickly conclude that "Whomever wins the most support and the Republicans nominate" cannot possibly be the subject. Neither can, "Whoever wins the most support and the Republicans nominate" be the subject. Sorting out the relative clauses will make it clear to you.

Get Your Own Damn Blog Alert

Several people commented that they dislike this sort of blog post because they for some reason think grammar is not a sufficiently interesting topic.

If you feel that way, please keep those feelings to yourself. I pick the topics for this blog. If you don't like those topics, get your own damn blog. Don't comment on this one unless you want to address the topics I have chosen.